EDITOR RECORD: The following letter, regarding the schools of Luzerne County during the early part of the present century, was written me by Mrs. Hartman, who was educated in these pioneer schools and taught in them for nearly fifty years, for some studies that I have been pursuing with Professor Barnes, at the Leland Stanford Junior University, touching the historical development of the American intellect. Her letter is so full of historical interest that I commend it to your columns as a worthy contribution to the history of education in Wyoming Valley. Palo Alto, California. WILL S. MONROE.

Our ancestors coming from New England, principally from Connecticut and Massachusetts and being well informed, intelligent and practical business-like men and women, brought with them people capable of usefulness in all the requirements of an early, progressive and permanent colonial settlement They were of the best, learned and influential families of their several New England colonies. Education was ever considered by them the basis of prosperity, independence and happiness. They secured all the needed mechanics, ministers, physicians and teachers for the convenience and success of a new or pioneer settlement as parts of the required colonists. As the northeastern part of Pennsylvania was at that time considered by all a part of Connecticut they lived in conformity to all the laws and customs of that colony until the decree of Trenton, 1782 (Dec. 30), decided that we belonged to the jurisdiction of Pennsylvania. Connecticut's claim was from early in 1753 until Dec. 30, 1782.

But as the Connecticut claimants, or rather the "Susquehanna Company," had previously set apart 500 acres in each township for the benefit of the schools, that land continued still as an endowment for that purpose and the interest of the money those 500 acres sold for is still appropriated to that purpose in Huntington, and I suppose in other townships also. (Sold by special legislative enactment.)

After we (i. e., Northeastern Pennsylvania) became subject to the laws of Pennsylvania, the customs of the Yankees, or New England settlers, still continued, although much in advance of other portions of Pennsylvania. (I remember that such opinions prevailed.) The schools were kept in session three months in summer and the same time during the winter months. The teachers were hired by persons in for that purpose, styled a committee, all the voters agreeing to support the school and teachers, and each paying according to the number of pupils, in board or salary. (I taught two years of my early experience under that ruling.)

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Many academies and higher institutions were started and several were successfully maintained by liberal minded citizens for the purpose of higher development in the languages. Amongst the names of the earliest teachers of Huntington we find Amos Franklin, Samuel Franklin, your direct ancestor, Margaret L. Trescott, my grandmother, and others of the early settlers.

Other townships were also provided with home teachers who had received their education in the schools of Connecticut and Massachusetts or some higher institution (both my teachers, Thomas Patterson and George W. Wadhams, were college graduates) than the common schools of their native place.

The ministers of the gospel and the physicians were often teachers also, and although salaries were low, still those pioneers considered no sacrifice too great if their children could thereby be benefitted by good schools.

School houses kept pace with dwellings, while houses built of logs were lived in; generally the school house was also built of logs. I remember two that were used for schools after 1825 and one of them I think was taught in perhaps five years later, in the then limits of Huntington.

But in most of the school districts frame buildings had been used some years prior to 1820. When I first went to school our school house was quite old and weather-beaten as well as somewhat battered, whittled, etc., by

thoughtless boys and girls. It was a comfortable frame house, I think about 24 or 25 feet square, lined, ceiled and seated with planed boards of white pine with a yellow pine floor, all unpainted, as were also the weather boards of the outer coating.

The door opened near the corner of the building into an anteroom or entry as we called it. Four desks about ten feet long surrounded the enclosed area, with smooth benches or seats in front of three of them. The other bench was next the wall and the desk far enough in front to admit the larger girls to face the stove or to observe all the room and its occupants. The desk for the teacher's use was high to prohibit sitting by it to write, but was capacious enough to hold all the books belonging to the school, which averaged near forty pupils during winter terms. There were also three lower benches surrounding the stove, ten or twelve feet in length, for the smaller children. In the centre of the room stood a large stove, called a ten plate stove for burning wood, with the side doors off to emit as much heat as possible. The wood or fuel was supplied by the patrons of the school "district." It seemed an easy matter to warm the room by one of those large stoves, as the surface inside the middle box and some of the outer surface soon came to red heat. That kind of stoves was used generally until 1840, and in several places ten years later.

I think our school house was about an average one at that time; it was lighted by four 12 pane windows of 8x10 glass, one in each side, and if anyone broke a glass, duty and honor compelled him to replace it or to repair other damages done the building, thoughtlessly or maliciously.

Stewart Pearce says in his "Annals of Luzerne County" that the Wilkes-Barre Academy was founded in 1804. After the erection of the new court house in that year, the old building, being removed to the western corner of the Public Square, was converted into an Academy and was the first institution of learning, superior to the common log school house in Luzerne County." The first principal was Mr. Thayer, an Episcopal clergyman. Mr. Finney succeeded him. In 1807 the trustees requested Dr. Dwight, of Yale College, to send them an active, intelligent and competent teacher, a graduate of Yale. Garrick Mallery was sent for the place, under whose superintendence the Academy soon advanced to considerable eminence.

Greek, Latin, mathematics and all the higher English branches of education were taught. Andrew Beaumont was assistant teacher. They were succeeded in after years by others. Jones, Woodbridge, Baldwin, Granger, Orton, Miner, Talcott, Ulmann, Hubbard and Dana. In 1842 the old building

was supplanted by a brick one. Other academies and high schools soon followed in different places and favorable locations, affording facilities for the youth of both sexes to gain more advanced education than could be obtained in the "district schools," as they were then termed.

Pennsylvania, as a State, was slower to act in providing educational enactments for her growing population than some of the sister States, especially New England.

In 1807 the incipient step was taken, followed in 1824 by acts providing for educating the poor at the public expense.

From that time until the free school system was enacted in 1893, Luzerne County expended yearly several hundred dollars for the education of the poor. But many not able to pay for the educating of their children were too proud to ask for or accept that help.

In 1833 State Senator Thaddeus Stevens headed a force sufficient to gain an enactment providing for a common school system, supported by taxes. But as each township, borough or city was to adopt the law by vote, its beneficial influences were slowly adopted However Pennsylvania has steadily advanced until now her common school system has few equals in our great Republic.

The Connecticut Susquehanna Company also appropriated several thousand acres of their purchase for the benefit of the Indian school of Dr. Wheelock, in Connecticut. where several of the Delawares and other Indians from Eastern Pennsylvania were educated; also others from different locations and tribes, among them the noted Mohawk chief, Brant. This school was the foundation of Dartmouth College, of which Dr. Wheelock was the first president.

Other schools were established for educating the Indians within the bounds of Pennsylvania, of which those of the Moravians or United Brethren, were the most successful, at which many Indians were taught.

Count Nicholas Louis Zinzendorf, the founder and apostle of the "Society of United Brethren," came to Pennsylvania in 1741. A number of the society had preceded him two or three years earlier and had located at Nazareth, where the celebrated preacher, John Whitfield, had been endeavoring to found and build up a mission school for the benefit of the Indians. Whitfield had met with pecuniary losses and could not proceed with his noble plans.

The Moravians obtained his partially built town and large stone mission schoolhouse, where their leader came to assist them in 1741. The next year, after building a still larger mission town, named Bethlehem, nearer the Delaware River, he traversed the then almost trackless wil derness to Wyoming Valley and there en

deavored to plant a mission, but dissensions between the Delawares and other tribes in the neighborhood prevented. After staying several weeks in the valley and being joined by Conrad Weiser and others of his followers he partially succeeded. He left Martin Mack and others as teachers and missionaries, but the jealousy caused by the rival forces of France and Eugland soon after caused its discontinuarce.

A mission was maintained at Wyalusing several years later. Their mission schools at Bethlehem and other places in the Lehigh Valley were very successful for many years as means of educating the Indians and also the white pioneers of that region. The schools at Bethlehem are still well pat

ronized by many people of all other sects, as models of education in morals, as well as in other attainments. The Sisters' School, for girls exclusively, is esteemed by many as a rare model, and has been so esteemed by people of all creeds for over a century and a half, still well supported.

Before the adoption of the common school system each sect or church organization had founded schools of different grades and titles for educating the children of their own creed, but they all failed in reaching the masses, those outside of their own church environments. Sectarian bigotry was then moro exclusive than in later years. No doubt much of this toleration is due to the common school system.